Dave Spano Splits With Zherka

Dave Spano, who is waging a rather strange and very, very steep, uphill campaign to unseat his county-exec dad, Andy, told me today that he has had a “peaceful falling out” with his primary supporter—Sam Zherka.

Zherka is the publisher of the Westchester Guardian, a free weekly newspaper he uses to drub politicians he doesn’t like, among whom Andy Spano is one. Earlier this year, Zherka enlisted Dave Spano, the incumbent’s oldest child, to appear in a series of startling cable-TV commercials that called for the abolishment of county government.

The TV spots amounted to a public debut for Dave Spano, who had previously kept such a low profile that a lot of people didn’t even know who he was.

That was for starters. With Zherka’s encouragement, Spano then announced that was going to run against his incumbent dad.

Zherka, who runs a real estate business and owns a New York City topless club, has deep pockets and could’ve helped the semi-prodigal son with the big task of gathering petition signatures to get on the November ballot.

But minutes ago, Spano called to tell me that Zherka was out of the picture. It wasn’t exactly clear why.

“I’m going to continue to seek my signatures with only volunteers,” he said. “And absolutely no money from Sam Zherka or any of those folks. I’m totally disconnected from his paper, but not in any bad way.”

Spano said he “was still going to stay in the game,” but acknowledged that with Zherka’s help, he’ll have to hustle to get as many as 4,500 signatures before an Aug. 17 deadline.

“It may be late,” he said, “but I’m comfortable with the time frame.”

He said he has virtually no money and needs volunteers. He asked that nyone willing to help to contact him at his e-mail address: blueryder45@yahoo.com.

Phil Reisman is a veteran journalist and native of Westchester County. He began his career in 1977 as the head copy boy of a startup New York City newspaper that quickly went belly up. Reisman was not to blame for the newspaper's failure, or so he claims.

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2 Comments

the consultant

well it looks like david spano was used and discarded by
sam zherka…maybe sammy is getting tired of throwing
his money away on nonsense…even wealthy people get tired
of being on the short end of the stick